The Audacious Crimes of Colonel Blood

by Robert Hutchinson

  There were others in Ireland in the same sorry plight and feelings amongst the English and Scots Protestant population began to run high. Anger and resentment became widespread and there were furious demands for action to redress perceived injustices.

  A further factor in the growing agitation amongst the nonconformists was the Act of Uniformity of 166219 which made use of the new Book of Common Prayer compulsory during church services and decreed that officiating ministers had to be ordained by bishops. Any clergyman who refused to take an oath swearing allegiance to the terms of the Act faced ejection from his living. This legislation imposed the established Anglican Church and its rites and form of prayers on the population and further alienated Presbyterians and other dissenting ministers and their congregations.

  Fear of violence and unrest multiplied like an unseen contagion throughout Ireland. In October 1662, the Dublin government was forced to order that unauthorised stockpiles of gunpowder should be surrendered by 10 December under amnesty. A second proclamation in November banned anyone other than MPs and enlisted soldiers from openly carrying weapons.

  Another disturbing straw in the wind was the continuing losses, apparently from pilfering, of weapons from the army’s arsenals in Ireland. An inventory drawn up in June 1663 showed major losses of arms since the last stock-taking nine months before: 112 modern firelock muskets were missing; 848 older matchlock muskets, 837 bandolier belts with powder cartridges; 80 cavalry carbines; 93 pikes; 80 pistols and 3,499 swords. While in the normal course of events some may have been discarded because of age and others sent for repair, there were inevitable suspicions that some of these weapons had found their way into the hands of nonconformist dissidents – more than enough to equip a well-armed regiment of rebels.

  More perturbing, perhaps, was the absence of twenty-three ‘great guns of all sorts’. Again, this may have been because these cannon were no longer regarded as fit for use; of the remaining artillery, only forty guns were ‘sufficiently mounted’ for service in combat.20

  In early 1663, an intercepted letter written by Irish nonconformists was palpably designed to be both inflammatory and seditious. It purported to be penned by a Catholic and aimed to trigger antipopish hysteria with its talk of ‘crushing the fanatic [Protestant] officers [in the army] by peeling their rind and imprisoning some of the leading men’ as part of a plot to make the army in Ireland wholly Catholic.21

  Protestant settlers believed it was high time to sweep aside the niceties of political protocol and make a stand in the defence of their interests. On 13 February 1663, Sir Audley Mervyn, speaker of the Irish House of Commons, delivered an eloquent and powerful address to Ormond in the presence chamber of Dublin Castle.

  It must have been uncomfortable listening for Ormond as Mervyn rambled on, employing colourful, sometimes almost apocryphal prose, in a thirty-page speech designed to demonstrate the great anger felt by his MPs and their constituents. He began with dire warnings that popery still posed a grave danger to the Anglican religion in Ireland:

  Believe it sir, whatever delusive tenets have been broached of late, the contrary has been written in blood, not in his majesty’s kingdom, but wheresoever the Papal power has been exalted.

  Persons preferring the reformed religion are but tenants for their lives and fortunes till a time of slaughter is appointed.

  Mervyn then moved on to the unrest and disquiet over the restitution of lands under the 1662 Act of Settlement: ‘We have been asked to speak for the people, who had we not spoken for them would certainly have spoken for themselves . . . The alarm that Hannibal is at the gates is hot throughout the Protestant plantations’. They were being treated unjustly: ‘The law says “All hail Protestants of Ireland” but if the execution is dissonant we are crucified under a glorious inscription of mockery.’22

  Just over two weeks later, the Irish Commons reinforced their message to Ormond’s government by approving a motion pledging that they would apply ‘the utmost remedies to prevent and stop the great and manifold prejudices and inconveniences which daily did and were like to happen to the Protestants of Ireland by the proceedings of the Commissioners’.23 The vote did nothing to dampen the dangerous powder trail of discontent and protest.

  The lives and well-being of the commissioners were now being threatened and in London Charles II was quick to lend them his royal support in what was becoming an impossible task:

  We have heard there have been several threats and disrespects used to you by some turbulent and unquiet persons to discourage or at least [harass] you in the execution of the trust committed to you.

  We shall loyally support you against all such affronts and are pleased with your impartiality.24

  No wonder the acrid, sharp smell of insurrection began to creep through the streets of Dublin. That month, the lord lieutenant warned Charles II that the army in Ireland was so ill-prepared that it was impossible to predict how far a rising might succeed:

  This general discontent will not, I hope, cause any disturbance but if it should, the army is in a very ill state to repress [it], for there is nothing in the Treasury to draw or keep it together . . .

  If we cannot keep the army together it will always be in the power of a few desperate men to start a commotion with regard to which no one can say where it would end.25

  Ormond waited until 9 March before he made his official response to the Irish MPs’ resolution. He did not mince his words, reproaching them for having caused so much ‘general uneasiness’ that many English-born Protestants ‘had been frightened into selling their lots and adventures at vile and under rates or compounding with the old proprietors on very ill terms’.26

  In making his admonishment, Ormond was aware that a conspiracy to stage a coup d’état in Dublin was under way. On 4 March, he had received a letter from Philip Alden, a shady lawyer, a dealer in forfeited estates and a known agent of the former parliamentary general and regicide Edmund Ludlow, who after the restoration had escaped to Switzerland to save his head.27 Alden had been recruited by an army officer, Colonel Edward Vernon, as a double agent at the beginning of 1662 to monitor the activities of nonconformist ‘fanatics’ in Ireland. Now he was proving his mettle.

  His encrypted note to the lord lieutenant – sent direct as his ‘handler’ Vernon was away in London – provided sketchy details of a political conspiracy against his administration involving some Irish MPs.28 Ormond replied immediately, demanding to know ‘who are at the head of the design for taking [Dublin] castle’.29

  According to the spy, the plot had been under way since the beginning of 1662 with a ‘close committee, being most of the members of [the Irish] Parliament’ sitting daily in Dublin with the objective of overthrowing Ormond’s government and engaging ‘England, Scotland and Ireland in a new civil war’.30 Confirmation came the same day from a soldier named Jenkin Hopkins, who had been reportedly sounded out about joining the insurrection by a Lieutenant Turet. Further credence to the reports was provided by later news of the discovery of a parallel plot in Durham, but there the principal conspirator, Paul Hobson, had escaped.31

  The attempt on Dublin Castle was originally planned for 9 or 10 March, but the conspirators brought forward the date to Thursday, 5 March – just twenty-four hours after Alden revealed it to Ormond – because Sir John Stevens, constable of the castle, was due to mount the guard that day. He was blissfully unaware there were traitors within his garrison. A sergeant and fifty privates had joined the plot and, having obtained arms and powder ‘out of the store by the folly of the storekeeper’s boy, resolved to make their attempt on the outer gate’.32 Ormond organised a hasty plan to thwart the coup attempt with loyal troops, but the plotters got wind of it and fled the city.

  Two days later Ormond wrote to Chancellor Hyde describing how the plot to ‘surprise this castle’ had been discovered. He admitted ruefully that he could not ‘boast much of being master of the temper necessary for the government of as ill a sort of people as inhabit any part of the
earth. I am destitute of the power which should make them good [and] to keep them from doing hurt’.33 The same day, he wrote to Henry Bennet (the previous year appointed one of Charles II’s secretaries of state), announcing he was deeply engaged ‘in the examination of a conspiracy for taking this Castle and me in it’.

  He had discovered ‘no one better in it than [Captain] William Hewlett who has been accused of bragging that it was he that had murdered the last king’.34 Ormond added: ‘These fellows evidently take courage from the [Irish] House of Commons and if they change not and become more temperate, I shall presently make use of the power I have to separate them either by prorogation or for good and all. They will [create] less harm apart than together.’35 At least the chastened Irish Commons pulled back from confrontation. On 11 March they responded to Ormond’s biting words with a short, somewhat cringing response:

  Our address was certainly misinterpreted if it was taken to mean anything disloyal to the king.

  Our only wish was to lay before you and the Commissioners of Settlement certain considerations in order that you might take resolutions upon them.

  The House believes that you have done much to establish the Protestant religion and English interest. We never intended by the orders we made to trench upon your grace’s prerogative and hope that those who made the late plot against the castle will receive condign and speedy punishment.

  They concluded with the promise of steadfast assistance ‘against all opponents of the king’s authority’.36

  A week later, Ormond sent for Alden ‘for fear of discovery of our correspondence’. A face-to-face meeting was required to elicit more information to help find ‘the bottom of the plot . . . in some way that it may not spoil the use of future intelligence’.37

  Two days later in London that inveterate gossip Samuel Pepys heard of the conspiracy in a coffee house near St Paul’s churchyard:

  I heard how there had been a surprisal of Dublin by some discontented Protestants . . . and it seems the Commissioners have carried themselves so high for the Papists that the others will not endure it.

  Hewlett and some others are taken and clapped up and they say the king has sent over to dissolve Parliament there who went very high against the Commissioners.

  May God send all well!38

  The Irish government was meanwhile frustrated by its lack of evidence against the handful of minor players swept up after the aborted coup – mostly former parliamentary officers now working as ‘discontented tradesmen’ in Dublin. Ormond was exasperated at the failure to discover and then prosecute the ringleaders: ‘The design to surprise the Castle sticks at Hewlett’, he complained to Secretary Bennet. ‘We can trace no further – not even to get enough evidence to incriminate him legally.’39 He admitted to the king that ‘we find a difficulty in inculpating people in connection with the recent plot against the Council and Parliament . . . Since yesterday I have heard that some go about persuading the English that the Irish had a plot to destroy them’.40

  His irritation was exacerbated by widespread rumours that Edmund Ludlow had been involved in the plot and, if so, had cannily escaped his net. John King, First Baron Kingston, reported that the regicide was said to have been in Ireland

  until the last week and I think he came here when the last design [plot] in England failed him . . .

  He went from Limerick with a vessel pretended for the discovery of a Brazil41 and under that shelter [cover] has been fitting with arms, ammunition, provisions [for] the two or three months past.42

  Ormond continued to fear a fresh insurrection and was right to be cautious. By mid-April he knew the conspiracy to seize Dublin Castle had been resurrected by a wider and more capable group of conspirators. The news had come from a spy dispatched to Waterford, Kilkenny and Tipperary to act as an agent provocateur, pretending to recruit dissidents to the banner of rebellion. The agent, identified only by his initials ‘P.A.’ (noted on his report by a recklessly careless Ormond), indicated that two army officers, Major Alexander Staples and a Colonel Wallace, had joined the plot.43 This time, the lord lieutenant decided to sit tight, allow the plot to come to fruition, and catch the conspirators red-handed.

  Informing the king of this new danger, the lord lieutenant said the conspiracy involved ‘the same kind of people’ as were responsible for the former. He believed it was a real threat because of the ‘unusual meetings and preparations . . . about the same time in several parts of the kingdom’.44 Secretary Bennet, in response, inquired if Ormond had any new information about the plot and whether he could discover ‘any connections with England and Scotland . . . [where] there is certainly much combustible matter if a fire should ever break forth, from which God keep us’.45

  Doubtless inflamed by his brother-in-law’s incendiary polemics, Blood was deeply involved in the first plot – but the precise role he played remains ffustratingly opaque. During 1662, Blood was said to be active recruiting supporters amongst former parliamentary soldiers in Dublin46 and at Christmas that year he and William Leckie had journeyed north to Ulster to sow sedition amongst the Scottish Presbyterian settlers. Here he received some promises of support, with the Scots agreeing to ‘rise in arms and second the design of taking the castle’.47

  The part he played in the revived conspiracy is rather more transparent. Although the informer Alden contemptuously plays down his role, dismissing ‘Lieutenant Blood’ as merely an ‘agent [whom] they sent upon errands and not the chief of the rebels as generally reported to be’,48 it is clear he was much more than just a humble messenger boy.

  ‘Thomas Blood of Sarney’ heads the list of wanted men named in the government proclamation promulgated after the second plot unravelled, and Blood was supposedly the author of the rebels’ declaration, printed for general distribution after the successful capture of both Ormond and Dublin Castle.49 He looms large in the accounts of the conspiracy given under interrogation, as he was to lead the assault on Dublin Castle and claimed, according to one informer, to have planned the coup d’état ‘for three-quarters of a year’.50 Mere mention of Blood’s name was enough to send a cold shiver of apprehension down the spines of both the Irish and English governments in the months and years to come.

  Vernon commented to Bennet that while the lord lieutenant had ‘nipped the last little design in the bud, there is now one in blooming which (if it take) he will be surer to gather it when it is full ripe, which will be in a short time’. At the heart of the conspiracy was one Stephen Charnock, a former chaplain to Henry Cromwell, Parliament’s lord deputy in Ireland for two years from 1657. Charnock, said Vernon,

  was private, not stirring out of his lodging but on his coming and departure it’s good to have an eye on him but by a very curious [careful] hand, lest he, finding himself suspected may cause a jealousy [hamper] upon our intelligence.

  Government spies had established that this new conspiracy was part of a much more ambitious plan to overthrow the monarchy – with concurrent uprisings by radical nonconformists in England and Scotland. Charnock had

  told the villains [plotters] that they were so hampered in England they could not stir ‘till the ice was broken here or in Scotland’ (which is said to be very forward) and he assured them of £20,000 ready in [the] bank.

  He proposed Henry Cromwell as . . . their general which was generally rejected.

  The Scotch designers [plotters] seem to lean towards [establishing a new] Commonwealth and did not positively refuse Ludlow for their . . . captain.

  In England, Vernon warned, there were ‘rich discontents’ who had to be closely watched, ‘being there is so much money stirring and my Staffordshire intelligencer [spy] assured me they had notice from London that God had raised them up considerable friends beyond their expectation but at that time, the Lord’s harvest was not ripe’.

  I could say more, but it is unwise to do so without [using] a cypher. There are some postmasters on the road who are subtle fellows and have actually served as intelligencers and offic
ers to the rebels.51

  The Irish government imposed new security measures to counter the insurrection. On 4 May, two orders in council were signed. The first, designed to secure at least the temporary loyalty of royal troops, regulated military pay and organised the payment of arrears. The second directed ‘the return to his majesty’s stores in Dublin and in various other cities and towns, of arms formerly taken from thence’ – an administrative attempt to neutralise at least some of the weapons and munitions that had been stolen over the previous few months.52

  Ormond was confident he had the measure of the plotters. ‘The design . . . ripens very fast and is very far spread, yet my greatest care is not to let the conspirators find they are discovered lest they desist’ he told the king on 16 May.

  I want evidence and matter sufficient to make examples of some of them . . . Nothing would contribute [more] to the future settlement and peace of this kingdom.

  I do not doubt but that knowing what I do of their actions and intentions, I shall be able to resist and apprehend them in the very act of their attempting the castle . . .

  The lord lieutenant assured Charles: ‘I would not have acted upon my own responsibility in this matter but that I cannot, in all probability, [because of slow communications] have your directions. God preserve your majesty’s person and government from this wicked generation.’53

  Three days later, he instructed the governors of Carrickfergus, Derry and Galway to search diligently for conspirators and take action to secure the loyalty and security of their garrisons.54

  Matters were now coming to a head.

  That same day, Colonel Alexander Jephson, MP for Trim in Co. Meath, had approached Sir Theophilius Jones at his home in Lucan, eight miles (13 km) south of Dublin, with an incredible offer. Jones, a former governor of Dublin under the Protectorate and, since 1661, scoutmaster55 of Ireland, had a case set down for hearing by the reviled Court of Claims.

  Jephson’s horse had cast a shoe and while the two awaited its re-shoeing at a nearby blacksmith’s forge, Jones had invited his visitor into his home. In the buttery, a tankard of ale, a bottle of cider and a plate of meat were ordered up and, as they awaited these refreshments, Jephson laid his hand ‘on a large sword which he had by his side’.